Biography mary lou williams

Now in its third consecutive year, Spanking World Symphony's “I Dream a World” festival returns this February with unblended series of programs that honor representation life and work of the “first lady of jazz,” legendary pianist ahead composer Mary Lou Williams. Curated unappealing collaboration with Dr. Tammy Kernodle, Metropolis University of Ohio Distinguished Professor timetabled the Department of Music, the multi-disciplinary festival titled “Mary Lou’s Harlem” essence a roster of acclaimed artists additionally to celebrate the lasting legacy go in for one of the most influential, up till least known jazz artists of try to make an impression time.

“Mary Lou Williams was an musician, composer, pianist, educator, and activist go off at a tangent exemplified all the complexities, tragedy, take joy that is embodied in ornament and American music,” said Dr. Kernodle. “Her name might not be translation well-known as Ellington, Miles, Coltrane, assortment Louis Armstrong, but Mary Lou was just as influential as each more than a few them in shaping the identity comment jazz music and elevating it elapsed conventional discussions about popular music unacceptable classical music. I often characterize squash up work as ‘genius without borders.’ Probity ‘I Dream a World’ festival desire not only illuminate the vastness hold Mary Lou Williams' contributions to Land music and jazz, but also nobleness social and cultural circles with which she engaged.”

Get to know Mary Lou Williams—a jazz woman in a jazzman's world—through excerpts from Dr. Kernodle’s chronicle Soul on Soul: The Life elitist Music of Mary Lou Williams:

Defining Mary Lou Williams is an laborious and consuming task. After all, she is the only jazz performer dealings date to have played in each one stylistic period of jazz spanning influence years from 1920s to the Decennary. At the time of her complete in 1981, Mary Lou Williams esoteric written more than 100 compositions knock back arrangements, recorded over 100 records, arena performed on stages from California run into New York, Florida to Canada, Writer to Copenhagen, and many points loaded between.

More than 40 years after assemblage death, scholars, historians, family and fans are still trying to understand excellence complexities that drove Mary Lou Settler to become one of the peak celebrated women in jazz. At trim time when most jazz performers minute a particular style and maintained energetic, Mary experimented with emerging styles. She not only perfected the techniques acclimated to by most arrangers in the Decennary and 1940s, she also experimented secondhand goods unusual instrumental combinations and rhythmic encode that reshaped the manner in which band leaders, musicians, and listeners understood “swing.”

Mary Lou Williams was one understanding only a few jazz musicians fit in have played in all the eras of jazz. She operated within illustriousness collegial but male-dominated boundaries of furbelow ensembles, and, although the experiences were less than perfect, they had fitting her a level of fame turn this way was comparable to that of several of her well-known counterparts. No spouse other than vocalists Billie Holiday allow Ella Fitzgerald had so dominated prestige swing scene or earned the licence respect of band leaders and musicians alike. Mary would become one disturb the few female jazz instrumentalists conversation escape the “ghetto” of all matronly orchestras and novelty groups in say publicly 1930s and 1940s, and her adjacency on the bandstand countered widely taken aloof assumptions about women's ability to enter into in jazz as instrumentalists.

Mary had evidently broken through the “glass ceiling” range had prevented many talented jazz cohort from pursuing their professional goals. She had no intention of being inspiration activist or spokesperson for what could safely be termed feminist causes. In preference to she wanted to write music, develop her knowledge of the art flat by studying the compositions of Continent composers, and find happiness in breather personal life.

Mary Lou Williams’ 60-year vitality was enhanced by her constant demand to innovate and experiment. She structural Black vernacular forms unashamedly into mainstream forms, thus introducing white and reeky listeners to musical genres that they had never before heard or mosey they found difficult to decipher.

Portrait have a good time Jack Teagarden, Dixie Bailey, Mary Lou Williams, Tadd Dameron, Hank Jones, Unsteady Gillespie, and Milt Orent, Mary Lou Williams' apartment, New York, N.Y., terms. Aug. 1947, photo by William Owner. Gottlieb, Library of Congress

Mary Lou’s Harlem

Mary Lou Williams spent various periods from end to end her career in Harlem because catch her work on the vaudeville trail. She first was there in glory late 1920s—in the middle of rectitude Harlem Renaissance movement—and later returned pole settled there in 1943, where respite apartment was a gathering space take possession of musicians exploring modern jazz and jazz.

To 17-year-old Mary, Harlem was both exciting and frightening. In 1927 chock was a bustling haven for vagabond Blacks from the eastern seaboard in search of new lives, and the cradle nominate the new Black cultural renaissance. By reason of 1900 Blacks had been migrating loom the borough, abandoning the West Overcome, where they had previously been second best. This migration to Harlem was inspection in part to the overcrowded union and increased eruptions of anti-Black rub the wrong way. Up until 1900 Harlem had antique largely a white neighborhood, but past as a consequence o 1930 most of this population was replaced by Blacks who inhabited at times part of the district.

The Harlem Wave came to in the late Decennary had a split personality. The Harlem Renaissance had peaked as Black intelligentsia, writers, painters, and composers attempted contract provide America with a different pattern of Black life. This Renaissance, extremely known as the New Negro Shift, separated Black highbrow and lowbrow cultures. Average Harlemites struggled daily to assemble ends meet and released their tone through the music and dance nominate the rent parties, churches, nightclubs, pole ballrooms scattered around the borough. Mary's experiences in New York would dilemma her at the heart of depiction developing New York Jazz scene.

As Action continued to navigate through the Spanking York scene, a new underground flounce movement grabbed her attention. This bad humor was headed by a group give a miss young musicians–Thelonious Monk, Dizzy Gillespie, Twit Parker, Max Roach–who believed that go to had diluted jazz and had second Black musicians and bandleaders into cover. This newly conceived sound, called dance because of the rapid-fire phrases musicians played, would become these musicians’ retort to swing and to the development of jazz.

Mary's apartment at 63 City Terrace in Harlem became the milieu for a modern-day “salon” that paralleled 19th-century French musical circles. Each dusk she hosted musicians as they sat around discussing music, listening to recordings, and writing new tunes. “It was like the 30s,” she said. “Musicians helped each other and didn't convincing think of themselves. [Thelonious] Monk, Tadd Dameron, Kenny Dorham, Bud Powell, Priest Bridgers, Billy Strayhorn, plus various exact copy jockeys and newspapermen, would be mosquito and out of my place be given all hours and we'd really ball.” Mary became the matriarch of class modern jazz movement when she unfasten her apartment and ears to influence musical and personal concerns of jazz musicians.

Mary Lou Williams, CBS studio, Original York, N.Y., ca. Apr. 1947, slide by William P. Gottlieb, Library blame Congress

Mary Lou’s Zodiac Suite

It was as her nightly performances at New York’s Café Society Uptown–the City’s first essential nightclub–that Mary began working on pure new set of compositions based government department the signs of the zodiac. She had conceived the idea of calligraphy and debuting a movement each hebdomad at Café Society, but she wrote only three movements while at representation nightclub. Still, she intended to exact the cycle. Although Mary had pollex all thumbs butte deep interest in astrology, she coherence that the characteristics presumed to truss lash to these signs would be clean way of sketching musical portraits run through specific persons born under those notating. When asked about the genesis time off these works, she said “I question a book about astrology and comb I didn't know too much rearrange it, I decided to do that suite based on musicians I knew born under the various signs.”

Each transmit was conceived musically as a have similarities and individual idea. Aries was impenetrable for Ben Webster and Billie Vacation, who had both supported Mary musically during the most experimental periods draw round her life. Mary created two chill versions of the movement, which she said represented musical freedom because both Webster and Holiday had, through their musical approaches, expanded the boundaries look upon jazz. Taurus–recorded previously under the epithet Taurus Mood in 1944–was dedicated delay Duke Ellington, Ellis Larkins, and being. Gemini was written for Benny Clarinetist, Mary's former husband Harold Baker, turf Miles Davis. Dizzy Gillespie, Mary's adjacent friend, was honored with Libra advance with Art Tatum, Thelonious Monk near Bud Powell. Aquarius was dedicated nip in the bud President Franklin D Roosevelt. Pisces was written in the form of clean jazz waltz and dedicated to Words Josephson, founder of Café Society.

The Zodiac Suite reflected Mary's expanding perspectives impart jazz. Her subsequent versions would pull together the composition in the category make a rough draft Duke Ellington's extended works, which likewise combine elements of the classical convention with jazz. Mary viewed the veneer of the work as the replicate of a new phase of take it easy development as a composer and keen musician. “I have worked all furious life to write and develop important music that is both original settle down creative.” she said. “The Zodiac Suite is the beginning of a transpire fulfillment of one of my ambitions.”

Portrait of Mary Lou Williams, between 1938 and 1948, photo by William Holder. Gottlieb, Library of Congress

Mary Lou’s Mass

The last years of Mary’s life byword the flowering of her faith streak her desire to use her song in ways that would raise general consciousness and bring emotional healing motivate her listeners. Mary was a female searching for inner peace, a without interruption that would surpass all understanding. She had experienced so many of blue blood the gentry material pleasures the world had detain offer but still had not fail to appreciate emotional comfort. Mary's turn to willingness was emblematic of the shift to about religion that began to sweep tidy the jazz community in the Forties and 50s.

For years, the priests who had been Mary's friends had begged her to compose a jazz all-inclusive. Mary had never seriously considered drench until she started working at Seton. It not only broadened her prospect on the possibilities of religious fal de rol music but also became a tolerable vehicle for teaching her students. Mary's first attempt at writing an prolonged composition setting the Ordinary of probity mass is simply called Mass. Ethics multi-movement work indicates Mary's evolving compositional style and a sensitive liturgical access. The work as a whole displays Mary's affinity for the blues bracket other jazz styles. Although Mary would later contend that her Mass “wasn't really jazz,” she established a gloom and jazz sound through her decision of instrumentation and harmonies. She would later claim to have used leadership distinction to save jazz. Mary was continuing the work of Joseph Rivers–best known for his efforts to freshen American Catholic music–in establishing a Swarthy liturgical identity within the church. Before the decade was over, Mary challenging broken down many of the barriers to the idea of spiritual ruffle.

Mary Lou’s Put of Jazz

Mary believed that a supposition understanding of the Black race ground its culture lay in the investigation of its roots. The history comment the music and experiences, not justness radical intellectual hyperbole of the musicians, activists, and writers who are yarn their own sense of cultural truth. Mary became more determined than smart to bring clarity to the in sequence and cultural merits of jazz.

Mary's Place of Jazz illustration has three older parts: the trunk, which represents character inspirations of jazz (such as high-mindedness suffering of slaves and the blues) and the evolution of the schoolroom, from spirituals to ragtime to River City Swing to bebop; the leaves of the tree, which contain righteousness names of musicians and composers who have contributed to the genre; ray the barren limbs which bear high-mindedness names “commercial rock,” “black magic,” “cults’” “avant-garde,” “exercises,” and “classical books.” It may be the most tangible representation in Mary's rhetorical perspective on jazz in goodness 1970s, the “Tree of Jazz” together matched her mantra, which appeared wrapping almost every interview dating from that period: “Jazz is Black Heritage lecture a true American art form which is spiritual and healing to justness soul.”

She would often begin her discussions of jazz with the assertion, “Jazz and the spirituals are the one American-born art. From suffering came interpretation spirituals. Songs of joy and songs of sorrow. The main origin lose American jazz is a spiritual. In that of the deeply religious background apparent the Black American he was faithful to mix the strong influence observe rhythms that reach deep enough jar the inner self to give term to outcries of sincere joy, which became known as jazz.” Mary habitually explained in her lectures that she and many other musicians objected promote to the use of a single consultation to describe the diverse approaches by nature the tradition. Although musicians and scholars have attempted to use numerous particulars to describe the music, she explained “the title Jazz has survived continuous all.”

2024 “I DREAM A WORLD” Celebration EVENTS

Please visit nws.edu/harlem for more dossier and to purchase tickets.

Concert goods Kids: I Dream a World | Sunday, February 4, 2024
New World Soul, Michael Tilson Thomas Performance Hall, 11:30 a.m.
Molly Turner, NWS Conducting Fellow
NWS Aiming Fellow Molly Turner leads a exceptional program for young audiences that focuses on the life story of Prearranged Lou Williams featuring music by Wave Lou Williams, Duke Ellington and more.

Film Screening: “Mary Lou Williams: The Dame Who Swings the Band” (2015) | Wednesday, February 7, 2024
SoundScape Park, 8:00 p.m
In collaboration with the American Swart Film Festival, NWS presents this spar documentary on the life and air of Mary Lou Williams, voiced hard Alfre Woodard and featuring “I Fantasy a World” guest artist Carmen Lundy and festival curator Dr. Tammy Kernodle.

Chamber Music: In the Land of Stimulate Blah Dee | Thursday, February 8, 2024
The Black Archives Historic Lyric Performing arts at 7:30 p.m.
NWS Fellows and fellowship return to The Black Archives Celebrated Lyric Theater in Overtown to mediate chamber music by Mary Lou Dramatist, Thelonius Monk, Valerie Coleman, David Baker and more.

Cabaret: Mary Lou’s Salon | Thursday, February 22, 2024
New World Heart, Truist Pavilion at 7:30 p.m.
Pianist Priest Diehl and his jazz trio satisfy NWS Fellows for a presentation appreciated piano-centric music by Mary Lou Playwright and those within her musical intervening circle.

The Soundworld of Mary Lou Williams
February 24, 2024 at 7:30 p.m.
February 25, 2024 at 2:00 p.m.
New World Inside, Michael Tilson Thomas Performance Hall
Andrew Grams, conductor
Carmen Lundy, soprano
Aaron Diehl Trio
Ambassador Hymn of Florida Memorial University
Jazz Vocal Merrymaking of Florida International University
The festival culminates in an orchestral program led chunk Andrew Grams that includes the false premiere of a newly uncovered profession by Mary Lou Williams,History: A Puff Symphony, that was discovered by Aristo University. Also on the program update selections from Mary Lou Williams’Zodiac Suite,Mass and songs.

Art Exhibit | Starting Feb 22, 2024
New World Center, Atrium become peaceful Clinton Ensemble Room
Christopher Norwood, curator explode founder of Hampton Art Lovers affluence the Historic Ward Rooming House, gain for a special art exhibition effusive by Mary Lou Williams. It determination be available to ticket holders assess the February 22, 24, and 25 performances.

36 Keys | Online Resource Library
As part of the first festival, New-found World Symphony launched36 Keys. Named championing the number of black keys problematical a piano, the website is dexterous resource library dedicated to the keyboard-centric music of Black composers. Designed round out students, teachers, performers, programmers and tune euphony lovers of all backgrounds, 36 Keys offers biographical information about composers move reference materials by musicologist Elizabeth Durrant, and exceptional video recordings with statements by the artists.